I began to see myself as someone who can help others understand diversity rather than feeling like a social outcast. Ellen taught me to not care about other people's opinions. She taught me to be truthful. She taught me to be free. I began to live my life in love and complete acceptance. For the first time I had truly accepted myself.

Average. It was the worst, most disgusting word in the English language. Nothing meaningful or worthwhile ever came from that word.

I'm really attracted to strong women. Let me rephrase that, I'm really attracted to strong female characters.

I try to be feminine, yet intellectual and smart at the same time. You don't see enough of that.

You don't have to be emaciated or vomiting to be suffering. All people who live their lives on a diet are suffering.

I finally understood that by being on a perpetual diet, I had practiced a "disordered" form of eating my whole life. I restricted when I was hungry and in need of nutrition and binged when I was so grotesquely full I couldn't be comfortable in any position by lying down. Diets that tell people what to eat or when to eat are the practices inbetween. And dieting, I discovered, was another form of disordered eating, just as anorexia and bulimia similarly disrupt the natural order of eating.

When I was anorexic it just seemed like I literally wanted to disappear. And now I would like to reappear.